Can I make card present transactions from my webservice?

[nyflorida]

I have a (hopefully) basic question on credit card processing, particularly using Authorize.Net. This is my first foray into credit card processing so I have been reading up on it quite a bit.

Let me describe what I am trying to do. I am in the process of building a POS application (WinForms) that receives all it's data from my mvc3 based web service.

I want to include a credit card swipe & receipt printer with this solution. My thinking here is that I have the client app collect all relevant info (cc#, expiration date, name, etc) and call up to my webservice. Once I am in my webservice I would then call out to Authorize.Net, making a card present transaction.

Am I missing anything here? Is it ok to make card present transaction from a web server? Anything to watch out for? Should I be looking at AIM (Advanced Integration Method) instead?

[WHeisenberg]

If you actually have the system in place to get the data from the card swiper into the appropriate fields in the AuthNet system to fire off a transaction request,  I can't see any problems.

If it is a card-present transaction, then that means the customer is right there anyway.. so there's not much difference between that and the customer going to your website to make the purchase.

As far as the 'legality' of it,  that's above my pay grade, so we'll have to wait and see what the responses are to that.

Have you considered using the Terminal for manual transactions for this?   I understand that using that wouldn't exactly do everything that your own web site might be doing (setting up accounts, logins, etc),  but if you're just trying to get paid - without any back-end things happening that your site would normally do during a web-present transaction,  terminal might be the way to go.

WHeis